Use Less: The Travel-Size Principle

In the past five years, I have traveled a lot. As in for two years, I commuted from Tennessee to Wisconsin almost every week and for the last six months, I traveled from Iowa to Wisconsin and Tennessee pretty much weekly. For the most part, I tried to avoid travel-size anything, because it’s expensive and not that great for the environment.

However, when I abruptly decided to go visit my dying father earlier this summer, I decided that I wanted to avoid bringing my large toiletry bag, so I bought a travel-size container of face lotion (I had small containers for everything else).

As I was applying it one evening in my mother’s bathroom in Sweden, I noticed that I was using less lotion than I typically would if I had my regular bottle. “Hmmm,” I thought. “A smaller container causes me to use less product. Interesting…”

Thus, “the travel-size principle” was born.

It is as simple as this: Pretend that you have only a small amount of product and it will help you use less of it.

Why is this good?

Save money

Save resources

Postpone trips to the store

More money and time to spend on changing the world

So next time you use lotion, shampoo, conditioner, detergent, foundation, shaving cream, etc, just pretend you have a small container that must last for the duration of your imaginary trip (this imagery is a nice bonus of this principle).